


nightcall

by tentaclemonster



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [29]
Category: And Then There Were None - Christie
Genre: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Canon-Typical Mistrust and Paranoia, F/M, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Mentions of Canon-Typical Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: Vera gets a late night visitor.
Relationships: Vera Claythorne & Philip Lombard, Vera Claythorne/Philip Lombard
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257083
Kudos: 35
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	nightcall

**Author's Note:**

> 029/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt #58 – late.

Vera had only just gotten a knee on the bed, ready to crawl under the covers and into what she was sure would an uneasy sleep if she managed to fall asleep at all, when there was a soft _tap tap_ on the door.

She paused there and turned her head to look at the door like it was an alive, rabid, and rather hungry beast with designs on having her for dinner.

_Tap tap_ again. 

Vera pulled her knee off the bed.

Her gaze dropped down to not the top of the door where the tapping had come from but lower to the bolt that she could easily see was firmly slid into place where she had locked it earlier (and then double, triple, and for a fourth time went back to to make sure it  _was_ , in fact, locked even though she knew she had locked it and had already checked  thrice previously ).  Her eyes dropped lower still to the chair propped up under the knob  for good measure .

“Miss Claythorne? Are you awake in there?” a quiet voice penetrated through the wood and through the pounding of her heart and the stone of dread lodged in her throat, it took Vera a second longer than it should have to place it.

She hesitated for a long moment before she stepped closer to the door.

“Mr. Lombard?” she called back, just as quiet but with quiver in her voice that was audible even to her own ears.

She could hear him sigh on the other side – or laugh,  maybe . She thought the sound seemed rather amused .  A light huff rather than a sigh, perhaps. A meaningful noise if not a boisterous one, but unsettling all the same at that time of night, in the sort of situation they were in.

His potential amusement did nothing to douse Vera’s anxiety. If anything, it made Vera even more nervous.

“Mr. Lombard,” she said again with more confidence, a confidence she didn’t actually feel, “is there something you need? Is there – has someone else –“

Lombard  _did_ laugh then,  there was no mistaking it.

“As far as I know, everyone else is still quite as alive or as dead they were when you ladies locked yourselves in,” he said and Vera allowed herself but a moment to be relieved.

The relief died quickly.

Pray that it was the _only_ thing to die tonight.

Vera was still nervous, still afraid, and still confused at what Lombard was doing at her door so late at night. The possible explanation was, in fact, the source of all her current concern.

“Then what is it you need?” she asked him and took a step closer, now close enough to the door that she could reach out and touch the wood if she liked.

Vera did not like. Vera remembered Lombard’s pistol, wondered if perhaps he still had it after all, and whether a bullet would be strong enough and the door thin enough for him to shoot her  dead  without her  ever seeing his face  before he killed her .

There was a lighter pattern of tapping at the door then that startled her enough to jerk back from it. It sounded like fingertips beating a rhythmic line on the other side.

Hugo used to do that when he was bored, Vera recalled. She used to think it was charming, used to like watching his long fingers go down one by one from pinkie to index before they lifted up and did their little dance again.

“It isn’t so much a need, Miss Claythorne,” Lombard’s voice came again, “as it is a question.”

“A question?”

“I was wondering if you were alright in there. If, maybe, you would like some company for the night?”

Vera reared back, blinking at the door  in surprise . 

“Company?” she asked in a way not unlike how one might ask ‘A bear?’ or ‘A fire?’ in another circumstance. “Why would I like company at a time like this?”

“If you’re afraid,” Lombard said, “or if you’re lonely. If perhaps having a man with you might make you less so.”

There was nothing leading in his voice,  nothing that was overtly flirtatious, but Vera wasn’t born yesterday.  Truly, she  _wasn’t_ .

“I see...and Mr. Lombard, did you by any chance happen to go to Ms. Blunt with this same offer of your company?”

“Well, no, Miss Claythorne,” Lombard replied and Vera would have bet anything he said it with a smile, she heard it in his voice then. “That I didn’t.”

Vera humphed. The nerve of him!

Still, though,  nerve or not, her hand went to the chair propped up under the doorknob. It rested there. She thought about it. 

Lombard wasn’t anything like Hugo,  of course, but he wasn’t hideous or without his  own  charms, either – and he was strong.  Lombard was  probably the strongest of the group aside from Mr. Blore and certainly the craftiest. He’d gotten out of  plenty of  bad situations before, he’d said. If he wasn’t the killer, then he’d be the safest person for her to attach herself to if she wanted to live to get off this island and Vera absolutely wanted that. 

And it had been so long since she’d been with Hugo,  really,  and she’d been with no one else since. It felt like an age since she’d had a man’s arms around her, since she’d  felt a man’s warmth, tasted the salt of his skin  and smelled anything on her pillow other than the scent of her own perfume  rubbed onto the fabric from where she dabbed it on the pulse-points of her neck .

Lombard had the right of it in a way.  Vera was afraid,  yes, and she was lonely – she was lonely for a long time before she ever came to Soldier Island – and she  couldn’t discount that Lombard might be able to alleviate some of that, however temporarily. 

That was only if Lombard  _wasn’t_ the  madman targeting them all , however. 

Vera didn’t think he was but then again, there was a time when Vera thought that Hugo would love her  without condition  and  shower her in gratitude  for her unconditional love towards him and  that  they’d live happily together for the rest of their  long, wealthy lives. 

She was wrong then when it was only her heart on the line and she would hate to be wrong now when all of her life was up on the chopping block along with it. Vera did not trust her own mind when it came to what she thought she could expect from men anymore and therefore, she could not trust Philip Lombard and she would not let him in.

If he had a pistol in his hand at the very moment and decided to shoot her through the door then Vera could at least tell herself she was right not to trust him and that she hadn’t done anything to make it easier for her killer to make her his next victim, little good as that would do her in the end –  or  after her end,  rather.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Lombard, but I’m afraid that I’d rather be alone tonight,” she finally replied. “Any company other than my own seems like quite a crowd in the current circumstances. You understand, of course?”

Lombard was quiet behind the door for a long moment.

Such a long moment that Vera backed up a step and wondered if perhaps she should duck to the ground.  M ore morbidly still, she wondered  if she would hear the sound of the pistol going off before the bullet came through the door and went right through her head,  if the shot would be the last sound she heard before it guaranteed that she would never hear another sound ever again.

But finally, Lombard spoke.

“Of course, Miss Claythorne,” he said, and if he was disappointed Vera couldn’t tell from his voice alone. “I understand.”

And apparently that was enough.

She heard his footsteps  retreat from the door, disappearing into silence, and off in the distance Vera thought she heard the sound of Lombard’s own door down the hall  open and  then shut again  but that could have easily been  her imagination. 

She didn’t like the idea of Lombard wandering around the house so late or any ideas she had about what he might have been doing out of his room or who he might be doing it to, but if her own life was safe for one night more then Vera would count her luck where she found it  even if one of the others’ luck finally ran out. 

Perhaps that was selfish of her or cruel, but Vera would rather be the worst sort of wretch than to be dead. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she wouldn’t lie to herself about it, either.

She stood there quite listlessly for a time,  staring at the door like she thought  Lombard might return, but eventually  she  turned and went back to the bed, crawling into it like she had planned to before Lombard’s visit had interrupted her.

Vera didn’t know, laying alone in that bed, whether or not she was disappointed at the fact that she was alone in it. What she did know  was that she fell into sleep much more easily than she thought she would have with Lombard in the room with her. 

When Vera woke up in the morning, it was not quite as much of a surprise as she thought it would have been had she fallen asleep with Lombard by her side.


End file.
